1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to the monitoring of printing systems, and, in particular, to a system and method for monitoring a printing system using a camera.
2. Description of Related Art
Many modern production printing systems have multiple printing system “modules”. These printing system modules are designed to be easily installed and removed without significant printing system downtime or reconfiguration. This modularity enables the user to easily upgrade or customize the printing system based upon needs and/or market conditions.
Generally, a printing system has one or more primary printing-medium paths that move about the printing media to be printed on (e.g., paper, cardboard, transparencies or the like). The material of a printing-media is sometimes cut into sheets (of rectangular shape) from paper, plastic or other physical print media substrate, and are cut to a suitable shape and size to facilitate the printing system to move the sheet approximately along the general direction of a primary printing-medium path.
Normally a user submits one or more print jobs to the printing system that includes instructions to use one or more sheets of a particular size and shape to form multiple finished products. This can be done by using a printing system terminal, a printing system user interface, and/or a personal computer (with or without a network, such as the internet). Once a job is submitted the various printing system modules coordinate together to ensure that a good quality finished product results.
Because of the ease of reconfiguration of the printing system modules, jobs can be printed “on demand” and “just in time” while reducing costs, worker-hours, and other inefficiencies. Books, catalogs, brochures, direct mailings, inserts, point of purchase materials, sell sheets, statements, financial reports, and flyers with brilliant graphic arts quality are all easily manufactured. Additionally, multiple stocks can be provided by the printing system modules and may be mixed within a grouping of jobs (or within one job) and can take advantage of inline or offline finishing.
For example, a feeder module (e.g., a module with a primary function of adding printing-media to the primary printing medium path) can supply the printing system with adequate printing media to form the pages of a book. Another feeder may supply the primary printing-medium with an insert sheet (e.g., a bookmark). The two differing sheets may be printed on while another printing system module assembles them into a book with the bookmark inserted therein. Because of the wide variety of printing system modules available, a limitless variety of finished products are possible.
Some of the types of printing system modules available for use include: feeder modules, interposer modules, decurler modules, rotator modules, stacker modules, finisher modules, print engine modules, and interface transport modules.
Feeder modules add printing-media to the printing-medium path (e.g., as sheets) as well do interposer modules, however, interposer modules generally add a sheet that was pre-printed or pre-finished elsewhere. Decurler modules mitigate the “curl” that a printing medium can develop during processing. A rotator module rotates a printing medium, and a stacker module forms a stack formation using printing media (e.g., stack of sheets). A finisher module can form stack formations as well, however, finisher modules usually additionally include post printing devices such as sorters, mailboxes, folders, staplers, hole punchers, collaters, stitchers, binders, envelope stuffers, postage machines or the like. The print engine module marks the printing medium with inks and/or toners (such as with CMYK color separations).